Immortal
by LimerenceMag
Summary: Kara is not your average high school student – smart, independent, and quiet – with a secret even she doesn't know. Without any warning, she becomes a member of a vampire clan that learns of her secret and is thrust into a dark, unfamiliar world.
1. Chapter 1

Vampires live for thousands of years, or so I was told during my initiation into the most secret of societies—the vampire clan of rural Pennsylvania. There are no written records, of course, but the elders tell of beings who lived before Hammurabi's laws were first written in Sumeria. These were primitive beings, illiterate nomads who were treated as senile grandparents. They were given a place in our sect, but their movements were restricted and their opinions were never taken seriously. It is difficult to tell how long they've been around or from what process of evolution they arose. Their very existence, hidden though it must be of necessity, proves Darwin right: evolution does happen and the fittest do shouldn't be supposed that every vampire lives to see many thousands of years, however. Some choose to depart from the world on their own terms. Some of are killed by other vampires, an event that appears to us only because of our increased powers of memory and the extraordinarily negative connotations we attach to the passing of one of our own.I came into the clan after one of our number died, flinging himself into the sunlight with a maddened pre-calculation that falls upon us at times. When one of us passes, no matter what the reason, another is selected to replace the one who passed. We are always thirteen in number—no more and no less. If a vampire turns a mortal lover, they are both of them destroyed. The last such occasion was sixty-four years ago. The story was given to me as a cautionary tale lest I fall into the same trap. I am, or so I was told, the first human to be turned lawfully in all that man's name was Jory Pickett. He had been born before the Civil War and had been turned when bands of soldiers roamed the countryside looking for Native Americans to kill. This did not happen in Pennsylvania but it was told to me by way of illustration so that I might understand the feelings of white men at the time. The deceased was a Native American vampire, a remnant of those days when Pennsylvania was largely uninhabited wilderness. He kept to his customs and native dress, and was shot to death in 1864. Jory, then, came to fill the void they felt all too keenly.I do mean that, for he did seek us out. He knew of the clan's existence and did not believe us a fictive invention of scaremongers. He was accepted because he was a child of the new age, raised an educated man in a time where such men were considered a kind of pseudo-nobility by those who did not have the Latin or Charles Dickens from distant England. Vampires in the clan—three women and nine men—had all been raised without letters. Jory was a man who could help them understand the new age power that swept away so many old notions as though they were miniature castles of first, Jory got along with the clan. They taught him to drink blood discreetly so as not to arouse suspicion and how to pass the time in other ways when feeding was not required. The legends about vampires are mostly true: we burn under the touch of sunlight, though not of moonlight; we have to drink blood—the blood of humans is best and the blood of vegetarians is best; we can tell, for there is more energy in their bodies. It is a rare treat for us to across one who eats plants only. The clan is pleased with the current age for more people are ascribing to this diet. We do not necessarily have to sleep during the day; we merely have to avoid sunlight. Summers in Pennsylvania have long days and short nights, and because the clan did not choose to be asleep more than awake as some others have, we had to live underground. At the time of Jory's entrance to the clan, they lived in a deep cavern with the bats and the sound of dripping water of the ponderous stalactites. They marked time by the use of an hourglass which was turned every four hours. They tracked the days of the week, for it was Jory's new perspective which invigorated the clan from the sluggish routine they had been in for a century or Pickett was a more passionate than anyone had counted on. He valued the company of others and found life in the cave with interludes of feeding by moonlight to be something he could tolerate, never enjoy. Jory wanted to interact with society, to laugh at parties, to cry at the opera, and to flirt with women despite the blood pulsing in their necks the he must have heard as surely as all vampires hear it. He restrained himself as no other members of the clan had for a while. The kills were bloody and savage, taken from a repressed need they tried to allay but could not deny. Jory was different, though. He did not deny his urges, but chose the place and time to give in to them. A thief would go missing or a drunkard's body was found in a river in another county, with the local authorities not knowing or caring who the man was to look closely enough at his body for the bite marks that soon disappear as postmortem rigor sets in. Jory proved himself to be an example of how things could be done, a bridge between one age and clan, as with every vampire clan, is a clan of storytellers. Nothing is ever forgotten, even through the centuries. Jory's stories quickly became the stuff of legend in the clan, told and re-told in the cave by candlelight. The plot of a play, the gossip revolving around a young woman promised to a man who all agreed did not deserve her, and the other various fascinations came into the cave during these days. As Jory taught them to read, newspapers became an unexpected delight. Now, they not only had news from the local towns but also news from abroad, the words of world leaders presented to them for the first time in their it was that in the fall of 1947 with the clan living in a bomb shelter of its own design, Jory had become the unofficial leader of the clan through all the innovations that he had added. He brought them into a new century; they had a radio, two typewriters, and enough food to keep up the appearance of a shelter, though it was never consumed. The clan had anonymity and comfort. Unbeknownst to anyone, however, Jory's passion for women led him to fixate on a local girl: Jennifer clan knew everything about her, but they've never seen fit to tell me. From the first, the clan could tell that the relationship was not at all usual. Jory had enjoyed women but had known when to stop. Jennifer changed the rules or Jory had chosen to disregard them. The result was that Jory sought to bring Jennifer into the clan. The number thirteen had been arbitrary; not going over that number had been decided as a means to keep attention away from the clan and vampires altogether. A bigger clan meant more dead bodies and people gone missing inexplicably. Historically, it has happened before. Sometimes they called it the plague, sometimes feeding occurred during a war, of which there have been many. After the initial backlash and persecutions, vampire clans regulate each other and then themselves. Over time, new vampires were rare. At around 100 years old, Jory was considered new. That made it even harder for the clan to destroy him and night under a waning moon, the two had stolen away to the cave where we had once lived. By the time they spoke, three of the brethren, all of them elders, were listening in secret."I fear they will destroy you, or us," Jory confessed. "I did not anticipate their reaction to you.""Is such a thing possible?" Jennifer asked. "Can we be killed?""They would say that we are the undead—demons, shades, something unholy. This is what most people believe about us," Jory said, measuring his words. "There may be truth to that, but I don't think so. I believe we are demonized because we take life. We are inimical to human existence, so it is easier for them to ascribe supernatural aspects to us. In point of fact, this isn't true. We are more fragile than might be suspected. We can be killed by dismemberment, disembowelment, stabbing, shooting, beheading and burning. Yet, it's been proven that garlic doesn't affect us at all."Jennifer had been making a face and then she laughed, a quiet tinkling sound that carried across the night. "Wooden stakes through the heart?""Same as anyone, any other human, that is. It will kill us. But it is no more or less effective than any other method.""And you all know the best ways to do each other in, don't you?""We do, and they are stronger than I am. Faster, though, is another question.""Then we run?" Jennifer asked."It is all we can do. I will not sacrifice you to them, nor will I do nothing while they dispose of us. We will run north to escape the daylight. I heard there is a place in this world where the sun doesn't shine for six months out of the year, and that is where we will go. No more underground for us."They clasped their hands together and just as the elders were going to make their move, bolted away.Click Here to Read Immortal Part 2


	2. Chapter 2

Click Here to Read Immortal Part 1Vampires run like lightning. We are capable of running so fast that the friction of the air can burn us alive. The elders think it is because our muscles never decay nor degenerate. They weren't able to tell me why Jennifer ran through the night as well, every bit as fast as Jory. It is a subject upon which they choose not to both of them were streaks in the darkness following the North Star with the elders in pursuit. They crossed the border of Canada, black hair flowing out behind as they left tracks in the earth and snow that would some amount of to puzzlement by those who happened to observe the trails. When no rational explanation came to mind, it was forgotten; people don't want to believe in the super-human, even when the existence of such is readily were fast enough that they could run across water, most of which was near-frozen or ice altogether. The lovers were not aware of the pursuit until they stopped in the middle of a glacier floating on the Arctic Ocean. Jory's head turned slowly around as if he feared what he might he and the elders looked each other in the eyes, Jory said, "So, we fight.""It is regrettable, but we cannot allow you to endanger us all, even in this place," one of the elders said."I do not wish a battle either. The loss of any of us is a loss to us all," Jory said. "If I may, I would try to persuade you.""You may speak what words you wish," another elder declared. "Be warned that we will not change our minds, no matter how eloquent you prove to be.""Nonetheless, I will make the attempt," Jory said. "I have lived,- or existed,- for over more than a hundred years. To me, this is a long time. For those of you who can remember the days of the Romans, it may not be so long a time. For me, though, the time has been spent playing by the rules, doing what you think is best. I, who am of a new age, find the rules to be restrictive. I understand why they were initiated, yet I think perhaps we have grown beyond the need of some of them. I, in my way, have grown- or evolved."With this, a silvery wing appeared from Jory's left side and spread itself out. Of the observers there, only Jennifer did not appear surprised."This is the secret I have hid from you, the wing I grew a week ago. She was with me when it happened; it was then we decided we could no longer live with other vampires. That was when I decided to turn her to the blood."One of the elders understood the significance of Jory's statement at once. "She will have the wing as well.""I believe she will, and I have come to this place to start a new clan- a clan of two. Perhaps in time, I will grow another wing or perhaps not. Either way, I wish to depart from your way of doing things. This is the only solution I can see.""Were we to leave you alone," the response sounded bitter, "She would find you. In her madness, she would not understand why you did not seek permission to start a new clan, nor why you have disobeyed all of us, dishonored all of us with this rash decision. Then we would face her fury for not dealing with you. Our clan would be dissolved in an instant. You do not think of us when you do this, Pickett.""So truly, there is no other way," Jory said as he took a fighting stance."No, there is not."They did not tell me what the fight was like, and I did not ask them. I was told what happened at the end of the struggle- Jennifer's body torn asunder and Jory, overcome with grief, pulled his heart form his chest and threw it into the sea. Both of them were left on the glacier until the sun peeked over the horizon and incinerated their remains.Click Here to Read Immortal Part 3


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